Romanticised as ruins, treated as relics of forgotten military campaigns or as mere lessons in architectural history, the castles of England and Wales have too rarely been examined as places in which real people lived. Fresh both in style and approach and richly illustrated, Michael Thompson's book aims now to redress the balance. Examining the rise of the castle from its European origins in the tenth century to c.1400, the author devotes particular attention to the domestic accommodation - colourfully adorned but often cold and claustrophobic - that castles offered their aristocratic...

Extensively illustrated with photographs, plans and period engravings, Michael Thompson's book examines the decline of the castle as both fortification and seigneurial residence over the two and a half centuries that preceded the Civil War. In general, this was a period in which function played less and less part and display - even fantasy - ever more in the minds of castle builders. Although few new castles were built in England after 1400, the growing power of artillery and continuing warfare in Scotland and across the Channel in France continued to provide stimuli to fresh architectural...

Professor Thompson's 1969 book discusses the basic atomic mechanisms which give rise to the main effects induced by radiation in metals.